A blog about business in Fort Worth and North Texas, by the staff of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

03/11/2010

Texans earning minimum wage increased in 2009, BLS says

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said today that, in 2009, 474,000 Texas workers earned at or below the prevailing Federal minimum wage.

That accounted for 8.5 percent of hourly-paid workers in Texas, the BLS estimated.

“The number of workers in this category rose by more than 200,000 over the year,” the BLS said.

“The number of Texans earning at or below the Federal minimum wage in 2009 was essentially equal to the 1998 level of 466,000; this number trended downward to a low of 173,000 in 2006,” the BLS said. “Increases in the Federal minimum wage in each of the last three years resulted in larger numbers of Texans paid at or below the Federal minimum.”

Nearly 11 percent of women who were paid at hourly rates had wages at or below the prevailing Federal minimum wage, compared with about 6 percent of men, the BLS said.

Texas had the largest number of minimum wage workers among all the states and accounted for 13.3 percent of the U.S. total in 2009.